


Polar Vortex

by Vulgarweed



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Chicago, Dubious Consent, Incest, M/M, POV First Person, Rough Sex, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:07:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chicago is having its worst winter in decades - of course it's somehow Harry Dresden's fault. And in the cold time, hungry hunters get vicious and reckless.</p>
<p>Spoilers through <i>Cold Days.</i></p>
<p>Written for Porn Battle XV (The Ides of Porn)</p>
<p>Prompts: trust, safety, illicit, lick, beautiful, wanted</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polar Vortex

Midwesterners are tough mothertruckers; it's a point of pride with us that complaining about the weather is just a thing we do to keep our mouths flapping and the cartilage in our jaws from freezing stiff. No real Chicagoan is going to let a little thing like subzero mercury and ten inches of snow keep us from going about our business.

But when the harshest winter in 20 years lay on my city, and every edge of sidewalk was hemmed in by knee-high (on _me_ \- waist-high on everyone else) berms of rock-hard blackened ice gunk, and the streets cracked open and the train tracks bent, I was starting to take it a little personally. Even to the point of shaking my literal fist at the literal sky dumping another cold six-incher, driving the snowflakes sideways with a bitter wind.

There's an eerie beauty to it, mind you. The smoke from the chimneys does weird things, and fresh snow glitters in the streetlights like diamonds, and it's bright enough to read by at midnight. The garbage and doggie-doo is hidden for hours. Lake Michigan steams like a frost giant's dreams, and her isles and her bays are for imprisoning ravening eldritch horrors from the dawn of time and unspeakable nightmare dimensions. 

Okay, I can totally see why Gordon Lightfoot didn't write it that way. It really doesn't scan.

For all this ruthless beauty, I can see this unusually brutal winter for what it is. It's not a purely natural phenomenon. It's Queen Mab – that _frigid bitch_ – reminding me that she owns me. Fair enough, I got myself into this mess. I'd rather she not take it out on the three million people around me that she doesn't own, though. She must hate that.

I am the Winter Knight, and I wander on winter nights. There is that heavy muffling quality to the snow in the air and on the ground, the pitiful squealings of snow-stuck tires and the scraping of snowplows. The Queen's mantle holds me up, and I don't feel the cold unless I want to.

I want to.

The more bitter the chill, the wilder the wind, the more I become what I have become, if that doesn't sound too much like a bad New Age affirmation. New Agers don't really get primal magic, because they don't get _winter_ and the terrible sense of all-pervasive hunger. Nature's not about insights and white light. Nature is about fucking and eating and trying not to die.

And if you're aligned to Winter, it's about the hunt. When the air gets this cold and the snow piles up deep, I should not be around people.

I get drawn to the wild places. Chicago has more of them than people think, tucked away in random corners. Chicago is young as human habitation goes, and the veneer of civilization is still thin, and the wild will poke through every chance it gets. Little parks and vacant lots, far away from the wealthiest and busiest neighborhoods – that's where you go to find it. Or to let it find you.

This night, I found myself on the West Side. Humboldt Park hadn't really lived up to its fearsome reputation in recent years, but it still wasn't a place where you wanted to be too far after dark if you were prey.

No one of any kind was out on a night like that, when the wind-whipped snow thickened the air like a fog. Tall oak and elm trees groaned and creaked and whirled their branches like crazed fans at a metal show. Yeah, it was almost a real wild place. Weeks of bitter cold had removed any sense of manicured banality. That central lagoon got so tame in the summer that kids would swim in it and guys would go fishing (and catch what? Empty-beer-can-fish, used-condom-fish, dirty-needle-fish, rotting-foot-from-last-week's-gang-hit-fish?)

Even through the clear cold, I could smell the corruption. Appetities. Calls to lust and violence, tugging at all the worst parts of humanity while the hawk and the coyote hunt by purer instinct. I went running through the blowing snow for the pleasure of making my legs move, of making tracks, of the cold sharp air like knives in my chest. I wanted the park to be bigger, and then it was. I wasn't sure when I passed out of mundane-world Humboldt Park and into its bigger dimension in the Nevernever; the trees got bigger and the hills were higher, and the lagoon was bigger and frozen solid all the way to the bottom (we hadn't had an hour above freezing in weeks).

I ran for the joy of running, and as I ran, I knew someone, or something, was tracking and keeping pace with me, staying in my blind spot. I didn't need to see him. I knew it was some kind of hunter. Some _other_ kind, that is, other than Winter fae. I knew it was just another kind of monster, and one that was very close to me and getting closer all the time.

As close as a brother. Which he was. Thomas.

And it made me want to run that much faster – not because I was afraid of him. Well, all right, I was. Because he was probably going to call me on my bullshit again if he caught me. That's something to be afraid of, isn't it?

_You'd rather be dead than be like me,_ he'd said. Cut me to the heart. And I deserved that cut, because he was right. I hadn't thought it through. I'd just gone ahead and ordered my own assassination and didn't spare much of a thought for what it would do those I left behind, and that wasn't really even the worst. I'd sold myself short.

I was glad not to be dead. I thought I'd be better off dead than being a monster, and I was _dead wrong_ about that.

He was getting closer. I got faster. The ice of the frozen lagoon was endless, stretching out ahead of me, and off in the distance through the freezing fog and blowing snow I could see the bright lights in the graceful arches of the huge boathouse. Had to have a goal.

Thomas was going to catch me. I was going to let him. He was blazing so bright in my hindsight, his Hunger impelling him ever faster. One glance back and I let him see the beast in me, the tiger he'd have by the tail when he caught me. He liked it.

Talk about your points of no return. But I'd returned from so many of those already I wasn't even afraid of them anymore. I don't think Thomas ever was. 

The Nevernever reveals truth, and if Thomas had a veneer of harmlessness in the mortal world, there was no shred of it now. Fuck, just _look_ at him. I did, and then one of my feet slid out from under me and I went down like an axed tree just short of the boathouse. With a happy little snarl, he was on me. A wild gleam in his eyes, his limbs tangling with mine, and the narcotic, pheromonal threads of his power wrapping around me.

(I'm a prize idiot. If I wanted to have myself offed, why'd I ask to get shot? I should have hired a White Court vampire. Thomas wouldn't do it but his sister Lara might. That's a much more pleasant way to die.)

I couldn't make it too easy. I squirmed and scrambled, and shoved him off me, taking a swipe at him with Winter's claws as I craned myself up and kept running for the boathouse. Let him catch me a second time and then see what happened.

I knew what was going to happen. I knew it as I swung myself up the wall in a way I could never have done without Mab's mantle, let my ice claws grow to help me climb, and let the beast in me out to play. I still can't believe I actually made that climb, and with a boner that could cut glass at that. And Thomas was right behind me, and when I caught the look in his eyes, I was both very glad and very disappointed I'd already Soulgazed him and couldn't do it again.

In the back of my mind, I know what my brother is capable of. I even suspect some of the things he might have done. I used to prefer not to know, but in that moment I wanted all of the foul, horrific, predatory details – and I wanted him to do things just like that to me.

In the bright lights of the soaring arches and wide open spaces of the Humboldt Park boathouse, his beauty was breathtaking. He wasn't holding anything back, and I could easily see how a whole city could lay itself open, spread out and wanting, all for desire of him. He wasn't just beautiful by male model standards, he was beautiful by White Court standards. Is it any wonder I let him catch me? Is it any wonder I slammed him up against a wall really fucking hard just because I knew he could handle it?

The look of lust in his eyes undid me. White Court lust is like a narcotic gas. Once you're caught in its grip, you'd have to be a saint to resist, and my power was not based on resistance. Temperance and self-restraint and celibacy, that's my touchstone. NOT.

“Harry,” he panted. Last chance. “You know – of course you know – my powers. I could be making you want it. Just in case . . .”

I growled. So help me, I literally growled. “You can make me want it. But you can't make me _want_ to want it. And I do. That's all me.”

“I don't know if I want you to want to want it,” he said, vulnerable for just a moment. But then he flashed his teeth and I realized that was a double-edged statement.

“Tough titties,” I said. “I want you _bad.”_

“Well, that's how you're getting me, then. Bad to the bone.”

He moved so fast I'd been on my back for seconds before I realized it. He was on me and all over me, and White Court vampires don't bite to feed; he was just biting my neck for the hell of it. I raked his back so hard his shirt split beneath my nails, and his shivery little moan against my bruised skin motivated me to try to whip him around and flip him over under me. Wiry little bastard knew exactly how to use our height difference against me, though, and the thing was, I couldn't give less of a shit who wound up on top, because that sensation was sinking into me, deep and deeper, heating my blood, making me harder than I'd ever been before I'd died or after, making every inch of my skin oversensitized, perfect prey for his hands and his mouth. He had my shirt off and his wicked wet tongue doing things to my nipples I didn't know they were meant for; his hands undoing my fly as I went for his.

That drug that his kind emanate as they feed – well, it's a good thing more mortals don't know about it. There'd be some positive short-term effects – every single heroin and cocaine cartel on the planet instantly put out of business – but in the long run, the sex vampires would simply run out of willing and eager kine. 

God, I'd been in so much pain for so constantly for so long, so anxious and stressed-out and tired, I'd forgotten what it was to just feel _good,_ and this wasn't run-of-the-mill good, it wasn't even really-good-sex-good – it was all-is-right-with-the-universe-and-my-body-is-the-best-thing-ever-created-good. Thomas was working his way down my belly with his sex-mouth, lick after lick after lick, and skittering towards my cock with a teasing motion that I had no patience for. 

“Monster,” I said, pushing his hand down to it.

“It is, yeah,” he laughed. (Well, it's proportional and I'm kind of a giant. True. Can't help it.)

“I meant me,” I said.

“Me too,” he said, grasping me so hard it hurt perfectly. “You understand now.”

“I do.”

“It's okay. I know what the monster wants. Do it. I can take it.”

“Do you know what that means?”

“Sure do. Incubus, remember?” Thomas's gloriously handsome face smiled a fox-smile, wide and lusty, his sharp teeth and pink tongue beckoning me. Logical thought had left me long ago and I could only bathe in the narcotic haze of lust that had me pinned, and in the split second before my brain broke completely, he ducked his beautiful head and took the head of my cock in his mouth.

Fuck, he could open wide. He was hot and wet and tightening and loosening, sucking with a terrifying skill, and the glimpse of his shiny black hair, full of icy diamonds, shaking and bobbing over me, blowing in that howling wind . . . 

Um.

_Fuck._

That could finish me off fast but it wouldn't be enough for him. Somehow he was managing to get his pants off, and mine, and the next thing I knew, he was on his back beneath me, his legs around my waist. Panting. Needing. Demanding. “I know what you want to do,” he said. “I know what the beast in you is. Predator. Violator. You want to fuck and kill and you don't care in which order.”

I've never been so turned on and so scared and so angry at once. “That's . . . how you are?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “It's pretty fucking metal, really. Now fuck me and don't hold back.”

Empty night, I did. I pierced him deep. I gave him the full, rampaging force of me, rough and brutal, and I'd never seen him so full of violent, unbridled joy as he nearly crushed the life out of me with his legs and nearly sucked the life out of me with his aura. But I was a wild, vicious thing, and I had a _lot_ of life. I'd never used my cock as a weapon like that before, and I'd never used it with anyone I was so sure could take it as hard as I could give it. (Not even Mab. I gave my brother a lot more of my best.) I don't even know when the orgasm started or when it ended, because every pulse of me and thrust of him was that kind of muscle-spasming, razor-sharp bliss. We both little-died again and again until it felt like just a wall of it, a fog of pleasure-wind.

He was covered in bruises and come (his own, mostly), when he finally slowed me down and stopped me. Holding me. Not letting me pull out just yet. Catlike, he licked the sweat from my face and neck. “I almost drained you to death,” he said, shaky. “And you didn't even notice.”

“I noticed,” I said. “I just didn't care.”

He nodded and kissed my jaw. “I didn't either. That was the scariest part.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in our sweaty, musky scent, stark and fleshly against the pure cold of howling winter. I'd just fucked my half-brother, and that wasn't even the most illicit thing I'd done that week. The look in his gorgeous eyes as he cleaned us off with more elegance than any man should ever have wielding a spunk-rag told something I needed to know, desperately.

It had been badly wanted. _I_ had been wanted. In all our monstrousness, our violence, our tedious top-of-the-food-chain angst, Thomas and I had a certain safety together. Equilibrium. Trust – our worst is bad enough that most people couldn't even survive it. But he and I were well-matched now.

“What happens in the Nevernever stays in the Nevernever?” I asked hopefully.

“Never,” he laughed.

“Never say never. Again.”

“Oh, you're double-o-seven now? No, you're at least double-oh-eight-and-a-half.”

“I do have a license to kill now,” I laughed.

“You barely have a license to _drive.”_

And there it was. That puppy grin of his, lit up and heated from inside, because holy fuck, he was well-fed and warm. Even I was starting to shiver as I got my clothes back on and wrapped my duster around us both. And he was giggling like he was still pretending to be the ridiculous French hairdresser with gangly me pretending awkwardly to be his boyfriend. This could have _destroyed_ us, utterly, and it did nothing of the sort.

We wouldn't have wanted it as bad if it didn't have that risk. Is it because we're monsters now? I was too shagged-out to care. And I felt warm.

**Author's Note:**

> I set this in my neighborhood because I can.


End file.
